The negative perception of apprenticeships (particularly in construction) continues to be strong, often viewed as a career path for those not doing well enough for university, parents are 40% less likely to want their children to do apprenticeships than in other areas and young people cite low pay and low skills as reasons they’re not attracted to them as a career route.

In reality, apprenticeships set you on a trajectory to become business owners, graduates and high-level managers all while earning as you learn.

Go Construct is a platform that showcases such opportunities providing resources for anyone looking for a career in the construction and built environment sector.

National Apprenticeship Week is a key calendar moment to promote the opportunities in the sector, to support closing the skills gap and in turn ranking Go Construct as the place to go to discover careers in construction – it was time to harness a be a big part of that conversation.

The challenge was to cut through the noise of the week, show up in social media feeds and cultivate change – TikTok was the place to be.

There were three elements of the strategy.

Don’t make ads, make TikToks. With a bank of content generated by Go Construct Ambassadors, ads were created in the style of TikTok’s. Ambassadors were representative of the audiences, and we utilised content from BAME, female and Scottish ambassadors to hit KPIs.

Adapt for in-platform trends. At the time of #NAW22, the ‘POV’ (point of view) trend was all over TikTok and we used this to our advantage. The trend puts the viewer at the heart of a situation. For #NAW22, this would feature our existing ambassador quotes and snippets from their ‘day in the life’ footage to demonstrate why they love their apprenticeship and what it helped them achieve.

Mirror channel features. The creative mirrored everything about an organic TikTok. Footage was shot on iPhones, in short, consumable, scenes. Titles were made using the fonts and colours provided. Subtitles were created in-platform so that everything about the videos was natural and authentic and users would stop scrolling to watch.

Overall, we repositioned apprenticeships as a credible career option for anyone. It worked to reduce the stigma that an apprenticeship is only for those of a particular background or education.

The campaign was so successful that the creative was recognised by TikTok as one of their top-performing ads and is now featured in their ads library as an inspirational example for other brands.